Abyssal plain

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Diagrammatic cross-section of an oceanic basin, showing the relationship of the abyssal plain to a continental rise and an oceanic trench
Depiction of the abyssal zone in relation to other major oceanic zones
Aquatic layers
   Pelagic
   Photic
   Epipelagic
   Aphotic
   Mesopelagic
   Bathypelagic
   Abyssopelagic
   Hadopelagic
   Demersal
   Benthic
Stratification
   Pycnocline
   Isopycnal
   Chemocline
  
Nutricline
   Halocline
   Thermocline
   Thermohaline
See also

An abyssal plain is an underwater

ocean floor, usually found at depths between 3,000 and 6,000 metres (9,800 and 19,700 ft). Lying generally between the foot of a continental rise and a mid-ocean ridge, abyssal plains cover more than 50% of the Earth's surface.[1][2] They are among the flattest, smoothest, and least explored regions on Earth.[3] Abyssal plains are key geologic elements of oceanic basins. (the other elements being an elevated mid-ocean ridge and flanking abyssal hills
)

The creation of the abyssal plain is the result of the spreading of the seafloor (plate tectonics) and the melting of the lower

pelagic sediments. Metallic nodules are common in some areas of the plains, with varying concentrations of metals, including manganese, iron, nickel, cobalt, and copper
. There are also amounts of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and silicon, due to material that comes down and decomposes.

Owing in part to their vast size, abyssal plains are believed to be major reservoirs of

ocean fertilization have a substantial effect on patterns of primary production in the euphotic zone.[1][4] Animals absorb dissolved oxygen from the oxygen-poor waters. Much dissolved oxygen in abyssal plains came from polar regions that had melted long ago. Due to scarcity of oxygen, abyssal plains are inhospitable for organisms that would flourish in the oxygen-enriched waters above. Deep sea coral reefs are mainly found in depths of 3,000 meters and deeper in the abyssal and hadal zones
.

Abyssal plains were not recognized as distinct

physiographic features of the sea floor until the late 1940s and, until recently, none had been studied on a systematic basis. They are poorly preserved in the sedimentary record
, because they tend to be consumed by the subduction process. Due to darkness and a water pressure that can reach about 750 times atmospheric pressure (76 megapascal), abyssal plains are not well explored.

Oceanic zones

Main article: Oceanic zone
Pelagic zones

The ocean can be conceptualized as

photosynthetic activities of phytoplankton and other marine plants to convert carbon dioxide into organic carbon, which is the basic building block of organic matter. Photosynthesis in turn requires energy from sunlight to drive the chemical reactions that produce organic carbon.[5]

The stratum of the

euphotic zone (also referred to as the epipelagic zone, or surface zone).[6] The lower portion of the photic zone, where the light intensity is insufficient for photosynthesis, is called the dysphotic zone (dysphotic means "poorly lit" in Greek).[7] The dysphotic zone is also referred to as the mesopelagic zone, or the twilight zone.[8] Its lowermost boundary is at a thermocline of 12 °C (54 °F), which, in the tropics generally lies between 200 and 1,000 metres.[9]

The euphotic zone is somewhat arbitrarily defined as extending from the surface to the depth where the light intensity is approximately 0.1–1% of surface sunlight

irradiance, depending on season, latitude and degree of water turbidity.[6][7] In the clearest ocean water, the euphotic zone may extend to a depth of about 150 metres,[6] or rarely, up to 200 metres.[8] Dissolved substances and solid particles absorb and scatter light, and in coastal regions the high concentration of these substances causes light to be attenuated rapidly with depth. In such areas the euphotic zone may be only a few tens of metres deep or less.[6][8] The dysphotic zone, where light intensity is considerably less than 1% of surface irradiance, extends from the base of the euphotic zone to about 1,000 metres.[9] Extending from the bottom of the photic zone down to the seabed is the aphotic zone, a region of perpetual darkness.[8][9]

Since the average depth of the ocean is about 4,300 metres,

chemosynthetic archaea found near hydrothermal vents and cold seeps
.

The aphotic zone can be subdivided into three different vertical regions, based on depth and temperature. First is the

bathyal zone, extending from a depth of 1,000 metres down to 3,000 metres, with water temperature decreasing from 12 °C (54 °F) to 4 °C (39 °F) as depth increases.[11] Next is the abyssal zone, extending from a depth of 3,000 metres down to 6,000 metres.[11] The final zone includes the deep oceanic trenches, and is known as the hadal zone. This, the deepest oceanic zone, extends from a depth of 6,000 metres down to approximately 11,034 meters, at the very bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest point on planet Earth.[2][11] Abyssal plains are typically in the abyssal zone, at depths from 3,000 to 6,000 metres.[1]

The table below illustrates the classification of oceanic zones:

Zone Subzone (common name) Depth of zone Water temperature Comments
photic euphotic (epipelagic zone) 0–200 metres highly variable
disphotic (mesopelagic zone, or twilight zone) 200–1,000 metres 4 °C or 39 °F – highly variable
aphotic
bathyal
 1,000–3,000 metres 4–12 °C or 39–54 °F
abyssal 3,000–6,000 metres 0–4 °C or 32–39 °F[12] water temperature may reach as high as 464 °C (867 °F) near hydrothermal vents[13][14][15][16][17]
hadal below 6,000 metres[18] 1–2.5 °C or 34–36 °F[19] ambient water temperature increases below 4000 metres due to
adiabatic heating[19]

Formation

See also: Plate tectonics and Mantle convection
subducted back into the asthenosphere at oceanic trenches
Age of oceanic crust (red is youngest, and blue is oldest)

Oceanic crust, which forms the

conduction and convection of heat to form new oceanic crust. Accretion occurs as mantle is added to the growing edges of a tectonic plate, usually associated with seafloor spreading. The age of oceanic crust is therefore a function of distance from the mid-ocean ridge.[23] The youngest oceanic crust is at the mid-ocean ridges, and it becomes progressively older, cooler and denser as it migrates outwards from the mid-ocean ridges as part of the process called mantle convection.[24]

The

geophysicist and geologist John Tuzo Wilson
.

New oceanic crust, closest to the mid-oceanic ridges, is mostly basalt at shallow levels and has a rugged topography. The roughness of this topography is a function of the rate at which the mid-ocean ridge is spreading (the spreading rate).[29] Magnitudes of spreading rates vary quite significantly. Typical values for fast-spreading ridges are greater than 100 mm/yr, while slow-spreading ridges are typically less than 20 mm/yr.[21] Studies have shown that the slower the spreading rate, the rougher the new oceanic crust will be, and vice versa.[29] It is thought this phenomenon is due to faulting at the mid-ocean ridge when the new oceanic crust was formed.[30] These faults pervading the oceanic crust, along with their bounding abyssal hills, are the most common tectonic and topographic features on the surface of the Earth.[25][30] The process of seafloor spreading helps to explain the concept of continental drift in the theory of plate tectonics.

The flat appearance of mature abyssal plains results from the blanketing of this originally uneven surface of oceanic crust by fine-grained sediments, mainly clay and silt. Much of this sediment is deposited from turbidity currents that have been channeled from the continental margins along submarine canyons down into deeper water. The remainder of the sediment comprises chiefly dust (clay particles) blown out to sea from land, and the remains of small

pelagic sediments. The total sediment deposition rate in remote areas is estimated at two to three centimeters per thousand years.[31][32] Sediment-covered abyssal plains are less common in the Pacific Ocean than in other major ocean basins because sediments from turbidity currents are trapped in oceanic trenches that border the Pacific Ocean.[33]

Abyssal plains are typically covered by deep sea, but during parts of the Messinian salinity crisis much of the Mediterranean Sea's abyssal plain was exposed to air as an empty deep hot dry salt-floored sink.[34][35][36][37]

Discovery

See also: Bathymetry
Location of the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench

The landmark scientific

soundings by lowering long lines from the ship to the seabed.[39]

The Challenger expedition was followed by the 1879–1881 expedition of the

astronomical data in addition to taking soundings of the seabed. The ship became trapped in the ice pack near Wrangel Island in September 1879, and was ultimately crushed and sunk in June 1881.[40]

The Jeannette expedition was followed by the 1893–1896 Arctic expedition of Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen aboard the Fram, which proved that the Arctic Ocean was a deep oceanic basin, uninterrupted by any significant land masses north of the Eurasian continent.[41] [42]

Beginning in 1916, Canadian physicist

Meteor (1925–27) to take frequent soundings on east-west Atlantic transects. Maps produced from these techniques show the major Atlantic basins, but the depth precision of these early instruments was not sufficient to reveal the flat featureless abyssal plains.[43][44]

As technology improved, measurement of depth, latitude and longitude became more precise and it became possible to collect more or less continuous sets of data points. This allowed researchers to draw accurate and detailed maps of large areas of the ocean floor. Use of a continuously recording fathometer enabled Tolstoy & Ewing in the summer of 1947 to identify and describe the first abyssal plain. This plain, south of Newfoundland, is now known as the Sohm Abyssal Plain.[45] Following this discovery many other examples were found in all the oceans.[46][47][48][49][50]

The

R/V Kilo Moana indicated a maximum depth of 10971 meters (6.82 miles). The sonar system uses phase and amplitude bottom detection, with an accuracy of better than 0.2% of water depth (this is an error of about 22 meters at this depth).[51][52]

Terrain features

Hydrothermal vents

anomalous behavior of water. The solid green line marks the melting point and the blue line the boiling point
, showing how they vary with pressure.
Main article: Hydrothermal vent

A rare but important terrain feature found in the bathyal, abyssal and hadal zones is the hydrothermal vent. In contrast to the approximately 2 °C ambient water temperature at these depths, water emerges from these vents at temperatures ranging from 60 °C up to as high as 464 °C.[13][14][15][16][17] Due to the high barometric pressure at these depths, water may exist in either its liquid form or as a supercritical fluid at such temperatures.

At a barometric pressure of 218

black smokers and submarine volcanoes can be a supercritical fluid, possessing physical properties between those of a gas and those of a liquid.[13][14][15][16][17]

Sister Peak (Comfortless Cove Hydrothermal Field, 4°48′S 12°22′W / 4.800°S 12.367°W / -4.800; -12.367, elevation −2996 m), Shrimp Farm and Mephisto (Red Lion Hydrothermal Field, 4°48′S 12°23′W / 4.800°S 12.383°W / -4.800; -12.383, elevation −3047 m), are three hydrothermal vents of the black smoker category, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge near Ascension Island. They are presumed to have been active since an earthquake shook the region in 2002.[13][14][15][16][17] These vents have been observed to vent phase-separated, vapor-type fluids. In 2008, sustained exit temperatures of up to 407 °C were recorded at one of these vents, with a peak recorded temperature of up to 464 °C. These thermodynamic conditions exceed the critical point of seawater, and are the highest temperatures recorded to date from the seafloor. This is the first reported evidence for direct magmatic-hydrothermal interaction on a slow-spreading mid-ocean ridge.[13][14][15][16][17] The initial stages of a vent chimney begin with the deposition of the mineral anhydrite. Sulfides of copper, iron, and zinc then precipitate in the chimney gaps, making it less porous over the course of time. Vent growths on the order of 30 cm (1 ft) per day have been recorded.[11] An April 2007 exploration of the deep-sea vents off the coast of Fiji found those vents to be a significant source of dissolved iron (see iron cycle).

Hydrothermal vents in the deep ocean typically form along the mid-ocean ridges, such as the East Pacific Rise and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. These are locations where two tectonic plates are diverging and new crust is being formed.

Cold seeps

Tubeworms and soft corals at a cold seep 3000 meters deep on the Florida Escarpment. Eelpouts, a galatheid crab, and an alvinocarid shrimp are feeding on chemosynthetic mytilid mussels
.
Main article: Cold seep

Another unusual feature found in the abyssal and hadal zones is the

World Ocean, including the Monterey Submarine Canyon just off Monterey Bay, California, the Sea of Japan, off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, off the Atlantic coast of Africa, off the coast of Alaska, and under an ice shelf in Antarctica.[54]

Biodiversity

Marine habitats
Coastal habitats
Ocean surface
Open ocean
Sea floor
See also:
Deep sea fish, Demersal fish, and Benthos

Though the plains were once assumed to be vast,

molluscs), typically found at single abyssal sites.[57] New species make up more than 80% of the thousands of seafloor invertebrate species collected at any abyssal station, highlighting our heretofore poor understanding of abyssal diversity and evolution.[57][58][59][60] Richer biodiversity is associated with areas of known phytodetritus input and higher organic carbon flux.[61]

Bathysauropsis gracilis). Some members of this family have been recorded from depths of more than 6000 meters.[69]

CeDAMar scientists have demonstrated that some abyssal and hadal species have a cosmopolitan distribution. One example of this would be protozoan foraminiferans,[70] certain species of which are distributed from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Other faunal groups, such as the polychaete worms and isopod crustaceans, appear to be endemic to certain specific plains and basins.[57] Many apparently unique taxa of nematode worms have also been recently discovered on abyssal plains. This suggests that the deep ocean has fostered adaptive radiations.[57] The taxonomic composition of the nematode fauna in the abyssal Pacific is similar, but not identical to, that of the North Atlantic.[61] A list of some of the species that have been discovered or redescribed by CeDAMar can be found here.

Eleven of the 31 described species of

Polyplacophora class of mollusks), 22 species (2.4%) are reported to live below 2000 meters and two of them are restricted to the abyssal plain.[71] Although genetic studies are lacking, at least six of these species are thought to be eurybathic (capable of living in a wide range of depths), having been reported as occurring from the sublittoral to abyssal depths. A large number of the polyplacophorans from great depths are herbivorous or xylophagous, which could explain the difference between the distribution of monoplacophorans and polyplacophorans in the world's oceans.[71]

benthic isopods from the abyssal plains of the Angola Basin in the South Atlantic Ocean.[73][74][75] In 2003, De Broyer et al. collected some 68,000 peracarid crustaceans from 62 species from baited traps deployed in the Weddell Sea, Scotia Sea, and off the South Shetland Islands. They found that about 98% of the specimens belonged to the amphipod superfamily Lysianassoidea, and 2% to the isopod family Cirolanidae. Half of these species were collected from depths of greater than 1000 meters.[72]

In 2005, the

allogromiids. This is unusual compared to samples of sediment-dwelling organisms from other deep-sea environments, where the percentage of organic-walled foraminifera ranges from 5% to 20% of the total. Small organisms with hard calciferous shells have trouble growing at extreme depths because the water at that depth is severely lacking in calcium carbonate.[78] The giant (5–20 cm) foraminifera known as xenophyophores are only found at depths of 500–10,000 metres, where they can occur in great numbers and greatly increase animal diversity due to their bioturbation and provision of living habitat for small animals.[79]

While similar lifeforms have been known to exist in shallower oceanic trenches (>7,000 m) and on the abyssal plain, the lifeforms discovered in the Challenger Deep may represent independent taxa from those shallower ecosystems. This preponderance of soft-shelled organisms at the Challenger Deep may be a result of selection pressure. Millions of years ago, the Challenger Deep was shallower than it is now. Over the past six to nine million years, as the Challenger Deep grew to its present depth, many of the species present in the sediment of that ancient biosphere were unable to adapt to the increasing water pressure and changing environment. Those species that were able to adapt may have been the ancestors of the organisms currently endemic to the Challenger Deep.[76]

Polychaetes occur throughout the Earth's oceans at all depths, from forms that live as plankton near the surface, to the deepest oceanic trenches. The robot ocean probe Nereus observed a 2–3 cm specimen (still unclassified) of polychaete at the bottom of the Challenger Deep on 31 May 2009.[77][80][81][82] There are more than 10,000 described species of polychaetes; they can be found in nearly every marine environment. Some species live in the coldest ocean temperatures of the hadal zone, while others can be found in the extremely hot waters adjacent to hydrothermal vents.

Within the abyssal and hadal zones, the areas around submarine hydrothermal vents and cold seeps have by far the greatest biomass and biodiversity per unit area. Fueled by the chemicals dissolved in the vent fluids, these areas are often home to large and diverse communities of

giant tube worms, soft corals, eelpouts, galatheid crabs, and alvinocarid shrimp. The deepest seep community discovered thus far is in the Japan Trench, at a depth of 7700 meters.[11]

Probably the most important ecological characteristic of abyssal ecosystems is energy limitation. Abyssal seafloor communities are considered to be food limited because

benthic production depends on the input of detrital organic material produced in the euphotic zone, thousands of meters above.[84] Most of the organic flux arrives as an attenuated rain of small particles (typically, only 0.5–2% of net primary production in the euphotic zone), which decreases inversely with water depth.[9] The small particle flux can be augmented by the fall of larger carcasses and downslope transport of organic material near continental margins.[84]

Exploitation of resources

See also: Deep sea mining and Offshore drilling

In addition to their high biodiversity, abyssal plains are of great current and future commercial and strategic interest. For example, they may be used for the legal and illegal disposal of large structures such as ships and oil rigs, radioactive waste and other hazardous waste, such as munitions. They may also be attractive sites for deep-sea fishing, and extraction of oil and gas and other minerals. Future deep-sea waste disposal activities that could be significant by 2025 include emplacement of sewage and sludge, carbon sequestration, and disposal of dredge spoils.[85]

As

deep sea fish are long-lived and slow growing, these deep-sea fisheries are not thought to be sustainable in the long term given current management practices.[85]
Changes in primary production in the photic zone are expected to alter the standing stocks in the food-limited aphotic zone.

Hydrocarbon exploration in deep water occasionally results in significant environmental degradation resulting mainly from accumulation of contaminated drill cuttings, but also from oil spills. While the oil blowout involved in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico originates from a wellhead only 1500 meters below the ocean surface,[86] it nevertheless illustrates the kind of environmental disaster that can result from mishaps related to offshore drilling for oil and gas.

Sediments of certain abyssal plains contain abundant mineral resources, notably

Clarion-Clipperton fracture zone (CCFZ) is an area within the Pacific nodule province that is currently under exploration for its mineral potential.[61]

Eight commercial contractors are currently licensed by the

intergovernmental organization established to organize and control all mineral-related activities in the international seabed area beyond the limits of national jurisdiction) to explore nodule resources and to test mining techniques in eight claim areas, each covering 150,000 km2.[87] When mining ultimately begins, each mining operation is projected to directly disrupt 300–800 km2 of seafloor per year and disturb the benthic fauna over an area 5–10 times that size due to redeposition of suspended sediments. Thus, over the 15-year projected duration of a single mining operation, nodule mining might severely damage abyssal seafloor communities over areas of 20,000 to 45,000 km2 (a zone at least the size of Massachusetts).[87]

Limited knowledge of the

IFREMER) conducted the Nodinaut expedition to this mining track (which is still visible on the seabed) to study the long-term effects of this physical disturbance on the sediment and its benthic fauna. Samples taken of the superficial sediment revealed that its physical and chemical properties had not shown any recovery since the disturbance made 26 years earlier. On the other hand, the biological activity measured in the track by instruments aboard the crewed submersible bathyscaphe Nautile did not differ from a nearby unperturbed site. This data suggests that the benthic fauna and nutrient fluxes at the water–sediment interface has fully recovered.[88]

List of abyssal plains

Main article: List of submarine topographical features

See also

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Bibliography
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